Chagee Holdings Limited (CHA)

How it makes money

Most of the money comes from franchise partners, not from the person buying the drink. Franchise partners pay fixed fees — franchise fees, store opening service fees, certain third-party platform subscription and promotion fees — plus variable fees calculated as a percentage of the shop's GMV: trademark licensing, promotional services, supply chain management, technology services and operations management. On top of that they are required to buy their tea leaves, ingredients, packaging and equipment from Chagee, and those goods sales are the largest single piece of the franchise revenue line. The remainder comes from company-owned teahouses, where Chagee books the full retail price of every cup sold — a much smaller share of revenue but one that grew 92.7% in 2025 as the company took direct control of its overseas openings. Note the gap between scale and reported revenue: 2025 network GMV was RMB31.58 billion while net revenues were RMB12.91 billion, because franchised shops' till receipts never pass through Chagee's income statement.

Revenue by segment

Chagee's advantage is brand recognition and a dense store network that makes the brand hard to avoid in Chinese cities, which in turn makes its franchise slots worth paying for. What it does not have is protection of the product itself: the company's own risk factors state that competitors can copy its unpatented recipes, that it has limited bargaining power with suppliers, and that delivery-platform price wars can force it into margin-reducing discounts. Consumers face no cost at all in buying the next cup elsewhere. A falling average GMV per shop while the network keeps growing is the kind of evidence that argues against a wide moat.

A tea drink is a small, frequent, affordable treat, which makes demand steadier than for big-ticket discretionary goods: people rarely cancel a RMB18 cup the way they postpone a car. But it is still discretionary and habit-driven, sensitive to footfall in malls and office districts, to weather and season, and to how aggressively rivals discount on delivery platforms. The bigger swing factor for reported revenue is not the consumer cycle at all but the franchise cycle: revenue depends on how many partners are opening shops and buying inventory, so a slowdown in openings hits the income statement faster than a slowdown in drinking does. That is visible in 2025, when net revenues grew only 4.0% and franchised revenue actually fell, despite 1,013 net new shops.

Key risks

• Growth may not be manageable, or may simply slow — The company warns that if it cannot manage its growth, or if its growth rate declines, the business may be materially harmed. It explicitly points to a decrease in average monthly GMV per teahouse in China in recent quarters and a deceleration or decline in quarterly same-store GMV growth, and notes its limited operating history is a poor guide to future performance.
• Limited control over franchise partners — Results and growth are tied to franchise partners the company only partly oversees: 6,838 of 7,453 shops are theirs. Partners may fail to keep operational quality, refuse required upgrades, break regulations, pursue strategies that diverge from the company's, fall into disputes over rights and obligations, or fail to raise financing and go bankrupt — and their misconduct is attributed to the Chagee brand.
• Food safety and contamination — The filing lists food- or beverage-borne illness, tampering, adulteration, contamination or mislabeling — whether or not the claim turns out to be accurate — as a risk to the business, alongside shifting public opinion about the health effects of its ingredients. Named causes include staff hygiene failures, improper storage and handling of ingredients, refrigeration malfunctions and gaps in third-party suppliers' quality control.
• Competition and price wars on delivery platforms — The company describes the freshly-made tea drinks market in China and abroad as competitive and rapidly evolving, with well-funded new entrants and rivals able to copy its unpatented recipes. It warns that price wars and intense promotional competition on delivery platforms may force it to discount, and that it has limited bargaining power with suppliers to offset this.
• Raw material cost, availability and supplier dependence — Tea leaves and condiments have short shelf lives and need frequent, timely supply. The company says supplier price increases are hard to pass on, contracts may be renegotiated on worse terms at expiry, suppliers are not contractually barred from serving competitors, and it depends on third-party warehousing and logistics whose delays can cause spoilage.
• PRC government influence and evolving regulation — The filing states that the PRC government exerts substantial influence over how the company conducts its business, and that policies, laws and their interpretation and enforcement may change at any time, including on cybersecurity, data privacy, antitrust, foreign investment and oversight of overseas listings. It also flags uncertainty over how the PRC Foreign Investment Law may affect its corporate structure.
• Missing licences and permits — The company discloses that some company-owned teahouses have not completed fire safety filings and inspections, with fines of up to RMB300,000 per teahouse possible, and that the way it distributes prepaid gift cards may trigger further regulatory filing requirements. Franchise partners' own licensing gaps are outside its direct control.
• Overseas expansion into unfamiliar markets — The company says its experience abroad has been limited and carries added risk: lower brand awareness, unfamiliar regulatory and competitive environments, longer payback, higher marketing cost, tariffs and trade restrictions, currency swings, difficulty recruiting talent and limited availability of retail space.
• Public scrutiny and reputational attack — With a very large consumer base, the company expects to be an increasing target for complaints to regulators, negative media coverage and malicious allegations, any of which could damage the brand. It notes its limited control over franchisee behaviour compounds this, and that international operations add cross-border reputational exposure.

Revenue is spread across thousands of independent franchise partners and, in company-owned shops, across millions of individual drinkers; the annual report discloses that no single customer accounted for more than 10% of net revenues. The real concentration is not in any one name but in the model itself — roughly nine tenths of revenue depends on franchise partners continuing to open shops and buy supplies, and on the health of one national market, China, which still holds all but 345 of the 7,453 teahouses.